Beautiful Games: picturing the playmakers

These illustrations by
Daniel Nyari are remarkably simple and yet remarkably uncanny. With a strong emphasis on geometry and the principles of minimalism, the Romanian-born illustrator and lifelong football enthusiast renders familiar faces in near-symmetrical form; only critical details break the bare-bones approach, like Laudrup's characteristic one-side smile and Maradona's earring. 'I was always interested in impressions, so I loved painters like Cezanne,' Nyari says. 'Later, when I learned about minimalist design, I thought that's sort of like impressionism, just reduced; an impression of something using the least amount of visual information and clutter.' Nyari, who has been an illustrator for three years, produces his initial doodles on squared paper before realising them digitally. Last year, he was selected by Falcao to illustrate for Cromos magazine